CRITICAL REFLECTION

I have always found the public portrayal of Hartlepool and the North East in general to be at a disjuncture from the place I have lived all of my life. It was somewhat jarring to have such negative images of my hometown swooning over it and the same stereotypical voices defending it. ‘Proud Hartlepudlians’ they may be, but often as farce to the national media who exaggerate these characters in their singular portrayal. Clouded by this bigoted vision of Hartlepool, I developed an ambivalence toward my hometown. I wanted to return to the places I have grown up with, and revisit moments embedded within its landscape. This physical journeying through a homeland (and wasteland) was inspired by many psychogeographers, but specifically, poet laureate Simon Armitage and his walks through the peri-urban North West. I was taken by his introspection in Walking Home: A Poets Journey, where Armitage draws parallels to the bewildering attributes of the landscapes and his own sense of lostness. He notes how the two insight each other- for example how the mist evaporates his identity. Living within the ‘smog’ of Teesside, I particularly resonated with the effacing nature of ‘mist’, also being the title of Armitage’s poem. His closing sentiments read: ‘You are lost/ adrift in hung water/ and blurred air/ but you are here’. This line was the inspiration behind my project title and the acceptance that I can be both ‘lost’ and ‘here’: as much as this devolving northern town grapples with its own identity.

Certainly, I have found in the New Nature writing encountered throughout this unit, that it becomes necessary to lose oneself and all external impressions of the landscape in order to reconstruct a more meaningful and grounded relationship with the place. Locating myself within the planes of a constant yet ever-changing place is strangely reassuring. Regeneration is natural and requires moving back and forth- both spatially and temporally, as I found the sea to be a paradigm of. Living on the coast, I have grown a particular interest in seascapes. I consulted such literature as Jean Sprackland’s: Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach and Virginia Woolf’s The Waves as they depict a geospatial ontology with the sea and mutual geographical and biographical journey of discovery.

I wanted to conflate this very visual walking experience through the project medium: aesthetically walking through the places on paper. It was important to include photographs as a visual documenting of this experience and mapping the place as it stands- as a time capsule.

Having made visits to the Special Collections archive in the MMU library, I was inspired by the range of artistic and conceptual responses to landscapes. Hamish Fulton’s black and white photography in Bird Song is matched perfectly with concrete/ visual text: utilising uncompromising bold capitalised font and monochrome graphics assuming as much space as the photos. Fulton’s creative typography is its own topography. I wanted my layout to be similarly textural- compiling photos and different text layouts to create a visually stimulating account. Like the multi-focal account Rachel Lichtenstein employs in her project ‘Estuary’, I wanted to sprinkle my memories with the biographical information of the areas, the thoughts of family members and intertextual references. As part of this research, I looked into the online media portrayals of the North East and visited the town’s museum (The National Museum of the Royal Navy) and art gallery, as well as attending a talk by conceptual photographer Mishka Henner at the Whitworth Gallery. For parts, I thought my memories would be best expressed in poems, with more fidelity to my younger self as a detachment from my current self and in re-living the way it made me feel at the time. As less of a documenting but an expression, verse overtly demonstrates the difference between a present-day account and a younger child-focalization. This recreation aided my ecophenemological reconstruction of myself with the environment. I felt closer to the place by displacing my present self and adult perception.

However, trying to combine all of these elements and account outsider opinion proved harder than anticipated. Each landscape was so rich in factual and personal history that it was impossible to be holistic. I conducted and recorded interviews family members to gain insight into their attachment with Hartlepool. Though I could see that the town had a shared familial relationship collective identity, I found the interviews to be indirect and a distraction from my core relationship with the places. I settled that my project should be less concerned with the town’s factual minutia and secondary opinions, but remain my account as being the most honest portrayal.

There were also problems with the different mediums I attempted to explore. I had attempted to compile video and audio footage of my walks together with archived footage to coincide with the text. But there were several copywriting and technical issues and the video was abandoned. Creative directions I wanted to explore with the book also had to be reconsidered to prioritise the text. However, these challenges have promoted my decision-making skills. This project has advanced my transferable skills in task and time management. I have developed my multi-media digital skills, as well as refining my artistic eye which are both important for future creative career-paths.

Though there were lots of changes made throughout the process, I am happy with the conclusions I gathered. In physically mapping my hometown, I was able to cognitively map my childhood and visually map this experience in a memoir-type-book. If the intentions of psychogeography is to re-ground oneself through an apperceptive re-understanding of the environment, I believe this project was successful. My conclusion did not definitely locate me within my hometown but instead found it to be fundamentally indeterminate. My project explored how even the most ‘trust-worthy’ landscapes falter and change, and how equally I can be both ‘lost’ and found again by those places. When talking to my family members about this project, I have found that they too are more attuned to their environment and want to express their vacillating relationship through prose. Likewise, I hope to maintain an appreciation of places for all the new places I am yet explore with a perceptiveness installed through this creative exercise.